The Alicia grounded on the submerged breakwater at the entrance to San Diego Bay
BY MERIT McCREA
SAN DIEGO – On November 2, eight passengers were hoop-netting for lobster aboard the Alicia on a chartered trip out of H&M Landing. They were near Zuniga Jetty, a rock wall that is largely submerged at high tide and awash at low. It forms the eastern boundary of the channel at the mouth of San Diego Bay. In the darkness they found themselves over the rocks. We will leave it to the investigators to tell the story of how that came to be. However, almost immediately a couple of videos were posted online showing the rescue of the boat’s passengers and crews.
Jeffery Bragg’s video was one of the most complete. He just happened to be live-videoing his own lobster hooping efforts nearby when he spotted the Alicia clearly atop the underwater structure. It was apparent in the video in the calmness of the night as the boat heeled over when the low waves receded from around the boat a few inches.
During the 40 minutes of the video, Bragg would make several attempts to get safely alongside and ultimately succeed, with 5 persons safely transferring to his boat and then the Coast Guard RHIB arriving, the Alicia’s captain staying aboard well after everyone else had debarked onto the two private boats that were already on-site.
The Jetty has been a notorious boat-catcher over the decades. John Martin wrote for the San Diego History Center, “In the Spring of 1969 as actor John Wayne rounded the southern tip of Coronado’s North Island returning from a fishing trip into Mexican waters, his 136 foot family yacht the Wild Goose struck a semi-submerged rock pile near the harbor entry. Wayne roundly cursed the offending pile of rock and then consulted his nautical charts to determine what the Goose had hit. He discovered the obstruction was a crumbling breakwater the federal government constructed at the turn of the twentieth century with a name and provenance unfamiliar to him and most San Diegans called the Zuniga Shoals Jetty.”
LeadMaster Company founder Jim Pierce, dec. had won the Friends of Rollo Raffel grand prize Davis Boat one year. He had promptly, on his first outing or nearly so, approached the barrier as had John Wayne before him, with similar results – except due to the speed and toughness of the vessel, managed to clear the barrier and land in the channel, somewhat worse for wear for sure! Or maybe the story is he’d just tried to take a short-cut heading east on the way out. Either way, the story is the boat cleared and made it over the supposed breakwater.
With that already scratched into the hulls history, and an indefatigable sense of humor, Pierce named his new prize the Jetty Jumper. As you visit your favorite tackle shop and spot those characteristic yellow paper labels with the red and green writing on competitively priced terminal tackle from LeadMaster, think of Jim and the Jetty Jumper.
The poor Alicia, over the course of the following week, and owing to the repeated rise and fall of the tides, eventually broke up without being extricated from the trap.
The history of the Zuniga Jetty is long and storied. Initially there was a sand shoal on the east side of the Channel entrance, a hazard to navigation from the start. In 1894 construction of the initial jetty was begun, with the idea to both mark the fair water to the west and to force the tidal outflow from the bay into the confines of the main channel, helping to maintain its depth.
Recognizing that the sand foundation was not the most supportive for the rock rubble of the jetty, engineers designed and laid down a willow brush foundation to help support the stone atop the sand. Over time and years the jetty was constructed, with a railway
running its length that supported the transport of building materials to the terminus as it grew. Design height was 14 feet above mean lower low water, but was reportedly never fully achieved.
Over time the rock revetment settled and by the 1950s it was generally awash or submerged at most tide levels. In the 1970s platforms were constructed for a series of lights along its length.
Over time additional repair work has been done, but still today the one-time breakwater remains mostly an artificial reef on a sand bar, one that extends into the inter-tidal for over a mile making it a trap for mariners in the mostly calm waters behind Point Loma. This property makes it all the harder to see during high tide in the dark, with no waves to break over the shoal waters.
As ideal lobster habitat it attracts lots of lobster hunters to work as close as they dare as well.
